Why call git branch --unset-upstream to fixup

Question

I m more of a novice when it comes to advanced operations in git  I maintain my blog using the blogging framework Octopress  Though Octopress is not under any development since 2011  it serves my purpose well and so I haven t thought of changing anything so far   FYI  my blog is hosted on Github Pages     Today  while working on a new post  git status showed the following message   On branch source Your branch is based on  origin master   but the upstream is gone     use  git branch --unset-upstream  to fixup    The same message repeated for all the subsequent commands such as git add    git commit -m  message  and git push origin source      What does the message mean    Is something broken    If yes  what    Do I need to fix it     If possible  please point me to a pdf web article where I can read up on this and understand it for future   More details   bash-3 2  git branch -a   source   remotes octopress 2 1   remotes octopress HEAD - gt  octopress master   remotes octopress gh-pages   remotes octopress linklog   remotes octopress master   remotes octopress refactor with tests   remotes octopress rubygemcli   remotes octopress site   remotes origin source   Please let me know if more information is needed  Thanks

User · Answer

Actually torek told you already how to use the tools much better than I would be able to do. However, in this case I think it is important to point out something peculiar if you follow the guidelines at http://octopress.org/docs/deploying/github/. Namely, you will have multiple github repositories in your setup. First of all the one with all the source code for your website in say the directory $WEBSITE, and then the one with only the static generated files residing in $WEBSITE/_deploy. The funny thing of the setup is that there is a .gitignore file in the $WEBSITE directory so that this setup actually works.

Enough introduction. In this case the error might also come from the repository in _deploy.

cd _deploy

git branch -a
* master
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/source

In .git/config you will normally need to find something like this:

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
[remote "origin"]
    url = [email protected]:yourname/yourname.github.io.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "master"]
    remote = origin
    merge = refs/heads/master

But in your case the branch master does not have a remote.

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
[remote "origin"]
    url = [email protected]:yourname/yourname.github.io.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Which you can solve by:

cd _deploy
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master

So, everything is as torek told you, but it might be important to point out that this very well might concern the _deploy directory rather than the root of your website.

PS: It might be worth to use a shell such as zsh with a git plugin to not be bitten by this thing in the future. It will immediately show that _deploy concerns a different repository.

User · Answer

Issue  Your branch is based on  origin master   but the upstream is gone   Solution  git branch  --unset-upstream

User · Answer

This might solve your problem   after doing changes you can commit it and then   git remote add origin https    address of your repo  it can be https or ssh then git push -u origin master   hope it works for you   thanks

User · Answer

TL DR version  remote-tracking branch origin master used to exist  but does not now  so local branch source is tracking something that does not exist  which is suspicious at best   it means a different Git feature is unable to do anything for you   and Git is warning you about it   You have been getting along just fine without having the  upstream tracking  feature work as intended  so it s up to you whether to change anything   For another take on upstream settings  see Why do I have to  quot git push --set-upstream origin  lt branch gt  quot      This warning is a new thing in Git  appearing first in Git 1 8 5   The release notes contain just one short bullet-item about it          git branch -v -v   and  git status   did not distinguish among a   branch that is not based on any other branch  a branch that is in   sync with its upstream branch  and a branch that is configured with an   upstream branch that no longer exists       To describe what it means  you first need to know about  remotes    remote-tracking branches   and how Git handles  tracking an upstream     Remote-tracking branches is a terribly flawed term   I ve started using remote-tracking names instead  which I think is a slight improvement   Below  though  I ll use  remote-tracking branch  for consistency with Git documentation    Each  remote  is simply a name  like origin or octopress in this case   Their purpose is to record things like the full URL of the places from which you git fetch or git pull updates   When you use git fetch remote 1 Git goes to that remote  using the saved URL  and brings over the appropriate set of updates   It also records the updates  using  remote-tracking branches     A  remote-tracking branch   or remote-tracking name  is simply a recording of a branch name as-last-seen on some  remote    Each remote is itself a Git repository  so it has branches   The branches on remote  origin  are recorded in your local repository under remotes origin    The text you showed says that there s a branch named source on origin  and branches named 2 1  linklog  and so on on octopress    A  normal  or  local  branch  of course  is just a branch-name that you have created in your own repository    Last  you can set up a  local  branch to  track  a  remote-tracking branch    Once local branch L is set to track remote-tracking branch R  Git will call R its  upstream  and tell you whether you re  ahead  and or  behind  the upstream  in terms of commits    It s normal  even recommend-able  for the local branch and remote-tracking branches to use the same name  except for the remote prefix part   like source and origin source  but that s not actually necessary   And in this case  that s not happening   You have a local branch source tracking a remote-tracking branch origin master   You re not supposed to need to know the exact mechanics of how Git sets up a local branch to track a remote one  but they are relevant below  so I ll show how this works   We start with your local branch name  source   There are two configuration entries using this name  spelled branch source remote and branch source merge   From the output you showed  it s clear that these are both set  so that you d see the following if you ran the given commands     git config --get branch source remote origin   git config --get branch source merge refs heads master   Putting these together 2 this tells Git that your branch source tracks your  remote-tracking branch   origin master   But now look at the output of git branch -a  which shows all the local and remote-tracking branch names in your repository   The remote-tracking names are listed under remotes      and there is no remotes origin master   Presumably there was  at one time  but it s gone now   Git is telling you that you can remove the tracking information with --unset-upstream   This will clear out both branch source origin and branch source merge  and stop the warning   It seems fairly likely that what you want  though  is to switch from tracking origin master  to tracking something else  probably origin source  but maybe one of the octopress  names   You can do this with git branch --set-upstream-to 3 e g      git branch --set-upstream-to origin source    assuming you re still on branch  source   and that origin source is the upstream you want   there is no way for me to tell which one  if any  you actually want  though     See also How do you make an existing Git branch track a remote branch    I think the way you got here is that when you first did a git clone  the thing you cloned-from had a branch master   You also had a branch master  which was set to track origin master  this is a normal  standard setup for git    This meant you had branch master remote and branch master merge set  to origin and refs heads master   But then your origin remote changed its name from master to source   To match  I believe you also changed your local name from master to source   This changed the names of your settings  from branch master remote to branch source remote and from branch master merge to branch source merge     but it left the old values  so branch source merge was now wrong   It was at this point that the  upstream  linkage broke  but in Git versions older than 1 8 5  Git never noticed the broken setting   Now that you have 1 8 5  it s pointing this out     That covers most of the questions  but not the  do I need to fix it  one   It s likely that you have been working around the broken-ness for years now  by doing git pull remote branch  e g   git pull origin source    If you keep doing that  it will keep working around the problem   so  no  you don t need to fix it   If you like  you can use --unset-upstream to remove the upstream and stop the complaints  and not have local branch source marked as having any upstream at all   The point of having an upstream is to make various operations more convenient   For instance  git fetch followed by git merge will generally  do the right thing  if the upstream is set correctly  and git status after git fetch will tell you whether your repo matches the upstream one  for that branch   If you want the convenience  re-set the upstream     1git pull uses git fetch  and as of Git 1 8 4  this  finally   also updates the  remote-tracking branch  information   In older versions of Git  the updates did not get recorded in remote-tracking branches with git pull  only with git fetch   Since your Git must be at least version 1 8 5 this is not an issue for you   2Well  this plus a configuration line I m deliberately ignoring that is found under remote origin fetch   Git has to map the  merge  name to figure out that the full local name for the remote-branch is refs remotes origin master   The mapping almost always works just like this  though  so it s predictable that master goes to origin master   3Or  with git config   If you just want to set the upstream to origin source the only part that has to change is branch source merge  and git config branch source merge refs heads source would do it   But --set-upstream-to says what you want done  rather than making you go do it yourself manually  so that s a  better way

User · Answer

I had this question twice  and it was always caused by the corruption of the git cache file at my local branch  I fixed it by writing the missing commit hash into that file  I got the right commit hash from the server and ran the following command locally   cat  git refs remotes origin feature mybranch   echo 1edf9668426de67ab764af138a98342787dc87fe    gt  gt   git refs remotes origin feature mybranch

User · Answer

delete your local branch by following command   git branch -d branch name   you could also do   git branch -D branch name    which basically force a delete  even if local not merged to source

User · Answer

torek s answer is probably perfect  but I just wanted for the record to mention another case which is different than the one described in the original question but the same error may appear  as it may help others with similar problem    I have created an empty  new  repo using git init --bare on one of my servers  Then I have git cloned it to a local workspace on my PC   After committing a single version on the local repo I got that error after calling git status    Following torek s answer  I understand that what happened is that the first commit on local working directory repo created  master  branch  But on the remote repo  on the server  there was never anything  so there was not even a  master   remotes origin master  branch    After running git push origin master from local repo the remote repo finally had a master branch  This stopped the error from appearing   So to conclude - one may get such an error for a fresh new remote repo with zero commits since it has no branch  including  master

User · Answer

For me   git refs origin master had got corrupt   I did the following  which fixed the problem for me   rm  git refs remotes origin master git fetch git branch --set-upstream-to origin master

[git] Why call git branch --unset-upstream to fixup?

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